


All Mirth and No Matter

by clutzycricket



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Canon Disabled Character, Disabled Character of Color, F/M, Multiple Crossovers, Sexism in Science, Targaryen Typical Absurdity, Tony Fucking Stark
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-28
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-04-17 18:36:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4677083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clutzycricket/pseuds/clutzycricket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sansa's parents refuse to let her attend university so far from home by herself. Thanks to some clever timing, her cousin's half-sister is in need of a roommate.</p><p>Mind, it wasn't going to be quite as boring as Rhae had promised Sansa's parents, but at least Sansa could ogle the charming neighbor man.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> A revision of my Roommates verse from tumblr! Expanded content, less grammar woes, etc. As always, prompts are taken up at queenofairandsnarkness at tumblr.

Rhaenys ran on batteries, Sansa decided as she stopped, leaning the box outside the wall. Sharp-tongued batteries and possibly a demon. After Joffrey, her parents had been nervous about her leaving home, and after a good deal of persuasion, her mother had thought that moving in with Jon’s older sister was a good compromise. After all, Robb's fiance had been... not quite stashed here after that big blow up with her mother, and Rhaenys was a responsible doctoral canidate, not flighty like her father. And if she was a bit strange, had the defensive stance of an engineering major who liked her dresses, Sansa didn’t mind, but moving days were exhausting and the second-story flat meant hauling the boxes up the staircase. 

“Hello,” came a voice from the bottom. The man, about Rhaenys age with wild hair a Stones t-shirt under a blazer, was smiling and leaning on a cane, giving her a wave. “You’re replacing poor Jeyne?”

“Jeyne is my brother’s fiance,” Sansa explained, looking down and praying she didn’t drop her books. Either she’d crack his head open or he’d be showered in half the review catalog of  _Smart Bitches, Trashy Books_. (Well, a tenth. The box was not that big.) “She's getting married and I’m going to study for a masters.”

“Engineering?” he asked, and she shook her head. 

“Architecture,” she admitted. She loved the thought of renovating old homes to give them modern amenities while keeping their charms, and her professors all thought she had a gift. She had sketches for improving the lighting in Winterfell somewhere in this mess, she just wanted to make sure it was perfect before bringing up the topic with her parents.

“Do you want help?” he asked, eyes drifting nervously towards the box, which she hurriedly readjusted so as to not shower him with romance novels. Or her knickers and heels. Arya had been helping her pack at one point, and she wouldn't put it past her sister. “My brothers and cousin are here, Rhae knows them, and it’ll speed everything up.” He smiled, slightly self-deprecatingly. “I can order dinner for everyone.”

She agreed, wondering why Rhaenys had left out the fact that she had such a charming neighbor. "We'll all be ravenous, and I checked the fridge already- no food."

(Well, she supposed she knew, but it was still irritating. Unless of course the older woman was so wrapped up in wiring she hadn’t  _noticed_.)

"She'd probably cook for Bard and his minions," Willas laughed. "Either so he doesn't notice she slips money to his eldest for food or so he doesn't arrest her for playing handywoman. Mind, those of us who need the elevator working love her for it, even if some self-preservation is involved." 

"Damn straight," Rhae said. "And Tyrell, you can carry some things if I can," she said, and Sansa grinned at the older woman's shorts and the solarpunk prosthetic she designed for a project a few months back. Willas rolled his eyes. 

"Wicked woman," he grumbled. "And that thing cannot be comfortable."

"While I could say one suffers for fashion, I also would like to point out this is my mad science project," Rhaenys said, tossing her head. "And for that, I choose the place."


	2. Chapter Two

Bard walked into his apartment to the sounds of music, chatter, and clattering electronics. He sighed.

 

“Hello, kiddos. Hello, Rhaenys.” Tilda bounced up to throw herself into a hug, and Bain waved from his homework. Sigrid nearly dropped her paintbrush. “Rhaenys, did you rope my daughter into your project?”

 

“If I get a patent, she gets copyright on the design, the contract is on the table,” Rhaenys said from the oven. “Your oven wasn’t working right, so I made something with Sansa’s cooking shit and prayed.”

 

“She really did,” Bain said, grinning. “In a couple languages. Now she’s redoing the wiring.”

 

“I’m going to threaten Frey again,” she said, pulling her head out of the oven. There was a smear of grease on her forehead, and her hair was frizzing out of its braid, but she looked satisfied. “But the interior of the oven should work, except for a few parts I want to order.”

 

Bard looked at her.

 

“I’m considering it self-preservation,” she said frankly. “The wiring was stripped bare in bits, and there was a crack in one of the coils I put a patch on. I had Sigrid get that portable oven anyway, plus a few ingredients, since I claimed chef’s choice.”

 

Bard rolled his eyes and offered her a hand up. “But my oven isn’t going to explode? Or start trying to take over the world?”

 

She laughed as she stood, brushing off her skirt. “Bard, really, if I’m going to use anyone to hide my nefarious plans to take over the world, it’ll be Karstark.”

 

He gave her a Look. “Rhaenys, you are possibly the most terrifying prospect of taking over the world I’ve ever met.”

 

“No, that would be Aunt Dany,” Rhaenys said, looking innocent. “And I suppose no one would believe Karstark could program an AI, would they…”

 

He’d heard enough about Karstark- a man in her program who had said more than one nasty comment about her- to get that she was probably smarting from something today.

 

“We saved you a plate, Da,” Sigrid said, putting down the arm, which had a watercolor floral pattern on what looked like porcelain that even to Bard’s unskilled eye spoke of talent.

 

“I actually have a buyer lined up for that one already,” Rhaenys said, smiling. “She saw the work that Sigrid did last time, and wanted to know if Sigrid could do it. I was going to show you the contract when you got home, but she started outlining while I was helping Bain with math.”

 

He shook his head and looked at the contract, doing the sums in his head. The amount wasn’t enough to bowl him over, exactly, but he could breathe a little easier about her tuition fund. “Is it this going to be a repeated thing?”

 

“I’ll text you next time?” she said, irrepressibly, dimple flashing in her cheek. “Especially since I have an interview with Stark Industries coming up.”

 

“Wait, what?” he stared. “When did this happen?”

 

“Apparently I got enough attention from that article a few weeks ago and Arianne’s Instagram account that Tony Stark decided to hack into my engineering recordings,” she shrugged. “Then I got the official interview request. Don’t worry, I’ll keep acting as unofficial handywoman for the apartment building, even if I get the job.”

 

Bard laughed. He had to be amused by her bright cleverness, even if she could be a bit pushy. “I’m more worried about you loose in Stark Industries labs. I’ve seen enough of Bain’s bad sci-fi movies to know how that ends.”

 

“Really, for a detective, you keep missing how safety conscious I am,” she said, crossing her arms.

 

Tilda and Sigrid looked at each other, and Bain buried his head in his homework.

  
“You’ll be the most safety conscious supervillain the world has ever seen,” he agreed. She punched him in the arm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The mentioned Karstark is meant to be one of Arnolf Karstark's grandsons, and a... second cousin? to Alys and her brothers.


	3. Chapter 3

Sansa was starting to get the rhythm of living in their strange little building. She has her classes, of course, and her shifts at the library, so when they start she barely has the energy to do more than wave at their neighbors. Arya always pointed out that she was uncanny in her ability to be social even when she wanted nothing more than to curl up with a book and perhaps nap for a day or three.

(Well, Arya's exact expression had been "Act like the lovechild between Wikipedia and a Stepford Wife when a normal person would be throwing punches", but Sansa saw things differently than Arya.

Also, the last and only time she'd tried to throw a punch she'd broken her finger.)

There were six places in the building. One-A belonged to a rotating series of Frey girls, as everyone called them, though their last name was not always Frey. They were relations of varying distance to the landlord, and seemed to switch out at random intervals. The current crop was a clubber named Ami whose bounciness hid a surprisingly sharp mind, cheery Walda who was a manager at a crafts store, and Alyx, who was studying international diplomacy. One-B belonged to two med residents, one of which, Faiza, was a cheery, geeky girl who Sansa adored immediately. 

Willas Tyrell had Two-A all to himself, though his family visited often. Rhae and Sansa lived in Two-B, and Sansa got used to the Post-Its and knocks from other residents who wanted things fixed. (Faiza had dryly noted that some of the notes came from Alyx or Ami, and wondered what that said about the family trust in "Late" Walder Frey, who dragged his feet over every repair.)

Three-A belonged to Bard Dale and his children, and Three-B was currently unoccupied.

Still, occasionally, Sansa came home from the library and wonder what was her life.

Willas Tyrell was sitting in front of the open elevator doors on their floor, and eating what looked like leftovers from the very good Spanish restaurant a block away, a glass of sangria in hand. 

There was a set of ghostly lights coming from the elevator, and a very familiar set of grumbling. Sansa groaned, remembering the "Out of Order" sign on the elevator doors.

"Did she _really_?" Sansa didn't have to ask. Getting up the stairs must have been hell for the both of them- Willas was clearly having a bad day, judging by the way his hand kept creeping to his bad knee.

"Frey'll take a month to repair it if he has a good prospective buyer, not a student or poor academic like us, and neither of us want to deal with that in December, not to mention Bard needs to go shopping for his kidlets, so..." he grinned. "Also, I think she's slowly going mad waiting for that interview with Stark. So I agreed to listen for any disasters."

Sansa looked at the meal. And the book in hand.

"I'm working on  _Lady Windermere's Fan_ ," Willas explained. "We're entering the point where I need to think about what I should be doing next."

Sansa grinned. "Oh, I remember that play- We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars."

He nodded. "Have you seen it performed? We have a spectacular cast up right now."

"I haven't..." Sansa sighed. "I've been trying to get my schedule in some sort of order, and I'm just now able to deal."

He grinned. "Tell me when, and I'll get you a ticket. Stage manager's privilege. Well, nepotism, my uncle owns the place."

"That would be lovely," Sansa said.

Rhaenys let out a cheery cry.

"What are you supposed to do if something goes wrong?" Sansa asked, looking curiously at the elevator.

"...Call Faiza, possibly," Willas said, thoughtfully. "Or maybe an ambulance. She didn't say."

Sansa pulled out one of the berries from his sangria when Bard stopped on his way up the stairs. "Did I hear shouting?"

"...No?" they said simultaneously.

"Fucking hell, Frey, did you get these things out of a junk heap?" Rhaenys said, venom clear.

Bard sighed. "Plausible deniability." With that, he kept going, shaking his head.

Sansa and Willas looked at each other and started laughing helplessly.


	4. Chapter 4

Rhaenys had left the apartment to go give a lecture to a bunch of “ungrateful undergrads who shouldn’t be allowed near a fucking lab”, wearing one of her more intimidating leg prosthesis- the one that looked like it had liquid flame inside- and a snarl that meant she hadn’t flirt-fought with Bard recently, so Sansa was going to organize her study materials in a nice, easy to grab pile so she could make a run for it as soon as she could.

(Okay, the fact that Justin Hammer had apparently made an offer to Rhae’s breasts were a Thing, but this was worse than Arya in a mood.)

The click of a key and open door made Sansa jump and grab her books.

“Don’t worry, the Fury isn’t back,” Will Tyrell laughed, and Sansa blushed in... relief. It was relief, that was her story. “I let Rhae borrow some of my stuff and I need it back before my sister gets into town. They don’t get along- Rhae had to bail her and Aegon out of a French jail once.”

Sansa, who had heard Aegon stories, winced in sympathy. “The catacombs, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Willas shook his head. “Partially my fault. I told Marg some stories, and I think she wanted to make Aegon impress her. It… didn’t go according to plan.”

“I’d say,” Sansa laughed, standing up. “What did you lend her?”

“The slow-cooker, a recipe book, and some notes,” Willas said, as if he hadn’t let the building’s resident mad scientist borrow something that you _cooked_ in. She could cook, true, and did, but occasionally she rewired things for "efficiency". 

Her horror must have showed, because he gave her a wicked grin. “I heard you laid out the ground work for what tools can be used for what,” he said. “I’m placing my faith in you.” 

Sansa blushed, because that wasn’t something she was used to hearing, aside from Rhae in the matter of rent payments. Joff and his horrible mother had made it clear she was stupid and useless, and even her family was a bit doubtful about her choice in major.

And, well, she dropped a box worth of romance novels on his head when they first met.

They found the tools, Willas sniffing them with a teasing grin, and said, “Fresh and clean and no sign of tampering. Maybe you can come over for dinner sometime.”

“Maybe… I don’t have many night classes, just my library shifts, so…” she bit her lip. "Yes, I would like that."

“Then we’ll work something out,” he said, gently. “Now, to prepare before my sister kills me.” With that, he walked out the door.

Sansa looked at the door, thought of hazel eyes and clever hands and mind, teasing smiles and all the things that were slowly overriding her memories of Joff. Clearly, only one word in the English language could encapsulate her feelings right now.

 “ _Fuck_.”


	5. Chapter 5

Sansa woke up to raised voices, which should have made her flinch, but Joffrey and Cersei sounded nothing like Rhaenys even before Sansa got her face on. Rhae being cranky was a normal thing- Sansa blamed it on one too many pranks from Egg. Also dealing with Alys Karstark's idiot... she thought it was a cousin.

“For the last time,” Rhaenys’ guest said, and Sansa, recognizing Bard’s voice, rolled her eyes.

“Those two flirt like others fight,” she told her mirror, wincing at her hair. Thick, curly auburn hair was nice, provided she was willing to spend over an hour twisting it just so. Right now, it looked like a carroty thorn bush mixed with Bride of Frankenstein.

(She’d cut it, but Robb was a perfect example of why she was _not_ doing that, Arya, just because short hair suits _you_ does not mean that Robb doesn’t look like he has a red mushroom on his head…)

She looked at her vibrating phone, checking the time and letting out a snarled “drat”. She was going to be _late_.

 (Her hair _ate_ brushes- no paddle brushes, no travel combs, no plastic bristles.)

She managed to get the worst of it tamed and tied, ignoring the shouting as she hunted for a top to wear. Of course she didn’t do laundry yesterday. and borrowing from Rhae was impossible- the older woman was about half a foot shorter and four cup sizes larger at least.

Growling, she managed to find a dove-grey lace cami that made it look like she actually had breasts, before hunting down her jade green cardigan. 

Now for pants. The cardigan made her usual wardrobe of peasant skirts and maxi dresses impossible, and finding trousers for a six-foot woman with actual hips was damn near impossible. 

She found a pair that didn’t look too crumpled, and muttered curses about people who didn’t have to feel quite so hassled when shopping.

(Arya. Arya, who could go into most stores and be out in five minutes, and didn’t get why Sansa took “forever” and was slavishly loyal to some brands.)

She shoved on her shoes, wincing as she went out the bedroom door. She and Egg perhaps had a bet running on if those two would end up killing each other or screwing on the kitchen table.

“Ah, shit, it’s Thursday,” Rhaenys muttered, pinching the bridge of her nose. “I have that interview today.”

Bard, who was eating oatmeal and about to say something, paused and stared at her. “The Stark Industries interview?”

“…Yes?” she bit her lip, and Sansa made a note to remind her that the older woman’s current lipstick left stains on the mug. She'd need to touch it up.

“The one you have been worrying about for two weeks?” Bard looked incredulous, and Sansa shook her head at him.

“I have an alarm. I think. I managed to stress-block it from my memory, thank you Sansa!”

“Luck,” Sansa said, racing down the steps and probably closing the door behind her. “Also, you do anything on that table, you bleach it!”

She intended on winning her bet. Egg’s disgusted face would be priceless, and she could use the money for shopping.

 _Oh, shit, it’s Thursday_ , Sansa thought once she actually stepped on campus. She had a date with Willas straight after class. And she looked like… well, like she’d rolled out of bed and had no time to actually look nice.

And, she thought, rummaging in her purse, she’d forgotten her phone.

One day, she would get the hang of Thursdays.

**Author's Note:**

> Rhaenys's prosthetic leg is inspired by the Alternative Limb Project, found here: http://www.thealternativelimbproject.com/


End file.
